


No Power On This Earth

by mrs_d



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Bisexual Xander Harris, Character Growth, Episode Related, Episode: s04e01 The Freshman, Internalized Homophobia, Multi, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-25
Updated: 2018-08-25
Packaged: 2019-07-02 03:51:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15788370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mrs_d/pseuds/mrs_d
Summary: “Basically, I got as far as Oxnard, and the engine fell out of my car. And that was literally. So I ended up washing dishes at the fabulous Ladies’ Night club for about a month and a half while I tried to pay for the repairs. No one really bothered me, or even spoke to me, until one night when one of the male strippers called in sick, and no power on this earth will make me tell you the rest of that story.”This is the rest of that story.





	No Power On This Earth

**_Now_ **

The three of them borrow the school bus one night and drive north, till the crater of Sunnydale is far behind them. Here, the world is normal, almost painfully so. The people here have no idea how close they came to annihilation, but then, they never do.

Xander finds the place by memory — he’s driven here enough in his dreams the last four years. The palm trees are taller, thicker. The sign is new and shiny, but the name’s the same.

He pulls into the parking lot, shuts the engine off. Stares out the windshield and takes a deep breath. Behind him, he hears movement. Willow makes her way up through the seats and stands beside him.  

“You sure this is the place?” she asks.

“Positive,” Xander replies. He glances over, half-smiles in that self-deprecating way. “But, uh, don’t drive away until I tell you to, just in case.”

“Count on it,” says Kennedy from Willow’s other side. Firm and decisive, that’s what Xander likes about her. And, after Tara, he’s pretty sure Willow needs that.

Xander nods, but he doesn’t move. He should get up, go inside. That’s what he came here for, after all. But the butterflies are banging against the inside walls of his stomach, and he’s scared to move in case they come pouring out of his mouth.

Willow puts her hand over Xander’s on the steering wheel and smiles, the same smile that Xander recognizes from kindergarten, even though almost twenty years have come and gone.

“I’m proud of you,” she says, quiet and sincere.

Xander swallows hard. _Nothing to be proud of if I don’t get off my ass and move,_ he thinks about saying, but he remembers what his therapist has been telling him about being kind to himself, about how he deserves respect, even though his parents spent years telling him otherwise.

“Thanks,” he mumbles instead.

But he still doesn’t move. Not yet.

 

**_Then_ **

The owner of the Ladies’ Night, a huge woman named Roxane who owned a Harley Davidson and a leather jacket with the word DYKE embroidered on the back, stood in front of him, staring. Waiting for an answer.

“Well?” she said, when Xander didn’t jump at the opportunity to take off his clothes in front of a mass of strange women. “Rob’s late, and you’re the only guy working tonight besides Barry.”

“I don’t...” Xander began, but he soon discovered he didn’t know how to finish that sentence.

“Tell you what,” Roxane goes on. “I’ll double your pay for the night, _and_ you keep all the tips. Could go a long way towards getting that car of yours fixed.”

Bea, one of the waitresses, paused on her way through the kitchen and gave Xander an appraising up-and-down. “You think he can dance?” she asked, snapping her gum.

“Only one way to find out,” Sally answered her, putting a full plate down on the counter and ringing the bell.

Jeanette hustled over and picked it up, her heels clacking on the linoleum, her brown eyes wide with worry. “Getting rowdy out there, Roxane,” she reported. “Where the hell is Rob? Some of these ladies came out just to see him.”

Roxane sent Xander an imperative look that reminded him of Willow, and that, more than anything else, sealed his fate. He’d do anything that look demanded. He sighed, took off his apron, and hung it up.

“Atta boy,” Roxane called after him, as he headed for the dressing room. “I’ll settle the girls down, you just find something that fits.”

He nodded and shut the door behind him. A few minutes later, he heard her talking through the mic, her booming voice a muffle on the other side of the wall. Xander swallowed the tangy fear in his throat, grateful that he couldn’t understand her words.

“Okay. I can do this,” he told himself as he started flicking through the outfits that Rob had so neatly arranged on the rack. “No problem. Think of the money. Think of the money. Think of the— oh, dear God!”

He held up a— he didn’t even know what to call it. Neon yellow and shiny, a tiny triangle on a stretchy string.

“Yellow isn’t my color,” he declared, putting it back where he found it.

After some careful deliberation, he picked an outfit, deciding to go for what still felt familiar: a soldierly look. He settled on tearaway camo pants with a tight black tank top, a vest in his favorite army greens, and a very obviously cheap set of dog tags on a long chain.

Eyeing himself in the full-length mirror, he supposed he was ready. As ready as he was ever gonna feel with his junk crammed into whatever that black scrap of fabric was under his pants.

He emerged from the dressing room to find Bea just outside the door, still snapping her gum and looking at him like he was an abstract painting. Mildly interesting, but also possibly a gigantic joke.

“Took you long enough,” she said, and she tugged him towards the stage door. “Wait here.”

She flicked aside the curtain and made a series of complicated hand signals at Barry, the DJ, who glanced over her shoulder at Xander and nodded. A second later the music changed, and he leaned into his microphone. 

“All right, here he is, ladies,” Barry announced. “Sergeant Sexy himself, in his debut performance here at the Ladies Night. Stand up and salute him, it’s Alexander ‘Ace’ Carter!”

“Carter?” Xander repeated. “Does Barry not know my last name?”

“Break a leg,” Bea hissed, and shoved him through the curtain.

 

**_Now_ **

“Four years,” he says, still staring through the windshield. “But it looks exactly the same.”

“Kind of a dive,” Kennedy remarks. She’s not one to mince words, and Xander smiles at her bluntness.

“It sort of reminds me of the Bronze,” says Willow, not unfondly. “Did they ever have fumigation parties here?”

“Not that I know of,” Xander replies. “Though I wouldn’t put it past Roxane.”

“What’s a fumigation party?” asks Kennedy.

“I’ll tell you later,” says Willow. She nudges Xander slightly. “So are you going in or what? Because Buffy’ll probably want the bus back before morning.”

Xander nods. “I know.”

He takes off his seat belt, slowly. Not blinking. Would they even recognize him, he wonders. The building hasn’t changed, but he has. And that’s not even counting the hole where his left eye used to be.

 

**_Then_ **

Xander sauntered — definitely didn’t stumble, nope — but when he reached the pole, he froze. With all the thinking about money and what to wear, he completely forgot about the whole performance part.

What did Rob usually do? Xander had seen snatches of his routine, usually in rehearsal before the club opened, or after hours when he was goofing around for Bea and Jeanette.

“Take it off!” one of the ladies shouted while he was trying to make up his mind.

“Think of the money,” Xander told himself again. He was barely able to hear his own voice over the thumping bass of the music. “And be sexy. Think of something sexy.”

 _Buffy,_ his brain supplied, but that wasn’t helpful. Buffy’s a girl, and girl sexy wasn’t what he’s going for. He needed to be guy sexy. And not even Cordelia called him that.

 _Angel,_ he thought next, but that just pissed him off. Stupid brain. It was right, Angel _was_ sexy, but— ugh.

The dog tags clinked around his neck, and suddenly, he knew exactly what to do.

Because the guy he became the Halloween before last, now _he_ was sexy. And he was still in there; Xander thought about him a lot. The confidence he had in his abilities, in his appearance. The easy way he moved and fought, with none of Xander’s awkwardness. The way he talked to women, the way he looked at men.

The way he wanted both. Unashamed.  

Xander could do that, couldn’t he? He could pretend— force down all the ways that he wished he could be the soldier, and give it his best shot? He had to.

He started with the lady who told him to take his clothes off. He tugged at the dog tags and lifted them up over his head, crouching to drape them around her neck.

“That’s all you get,” he told her in a low murmur.

It worked: the woman clutched at the chain with one hand and threw some crumpled bills on the stage with the other. Xander gave her the soldier’s smirk and danced away.

He got kind of lost in the music after that, moving the way the soldier would move, winking at the ladies and pulling off his costume, bit by bit. He wished he had the soldier’s arms, but the ladies didn’t seem to mind his own. He flexed for them, let them run their fingers along the skin that he wished was still tattooed. He shook his ass in time to the beat, and tore his pants off at the moment that felt right.

The audience whooped, which he took as a good sign, and he whirled around to show them the front. His dick felt kind of unstable in its skimpy costume, but the ladies seemed to like it, and Xander let himself play it up, raising one hand to the back of his head and rocking his hips forward, back, and around, the soldier’s grace in all his movements.

Then his eyes landed on Rob at the back of the club. Watching him. Looking at him the way the soldier looked at men. The way he—

He remembered, that Halloween night, when the guy he didn’t recognize as Angel stormed into the house. Xander’s heart had skipped a few beats, his eyes darted up and down, appreciating the sight before him.

And now Rob was giving him that same look, his teeth on his bottom lip, his eyes tracing Xander’s form, hovering around the scrap of black fabric that was the only thing between him and nakedness. Before Xander could stop it, the soldier in him smirked again, and Rob grinned back.

He kind of looked like Angel, Xander realized. Not as dead, though. His skin was rich and warm, his black hair thicker and more, well, alive.

The music slowed to a stop, and Xander bowed to the audience, picked up his hard-earned money — was it dirty to be proud of that? it felt dirty — and blew the ladies some kisses as he headed offstage.

Rob had disappeared, and even as Bea patted his back and congratulated him, Xander wondered where he went. He felt almost— no, that was the soldier who felt disappointed. The soldier who wanted Rob’s eyes on him again, wanted his hands, his lips—

“Hi,” said a voice when Xander stepped into the dressing room.

Xander looked up, alarmed, to find Rob in front of the mirror, applying just the barest hint of black liner to his almond-shaped eyes. It really made them pop,  Xander observed. Especially with the tight t-shirt he was wearing and the silver chains around his neck. Xander found he couldn’t quite look away.

“Sorry I was so late. Thanks for warming them up for me,” Rob went on. He turned around, surveyed Xander from top to bottom with a raised eyebrow. “My clothes fit you better than I was expecting.”

 _You were expecting this?_ Xander thought, but it was quickly superseded by the realization that he was still mostly naked. He felt his face heat up as he reached for his jeans, which seemed way too baggy in his hands.

Rob was still looking at him, still smiling faintly. Xander needed to say something. It was getting awkward.

“Thanks,” he said finally, and Rob’s smile widened a little. “I’ve never done that before.”

“I couldn’t tell,” replied Rob, but, to Xander’s surprise, his tone wasn’t sarcastic. He got to his feet, passed by Xander on the way to the costume rack.

He was way too close. Xander could smell him, feel his body heat. His heart started flip-flopping in his chest the way it hadn’t since the night that he and Faith— the only night that he and Faith, that he and anyone—

“I guess I better get out there,” Rob said, picking a black and flowy cape and throwing it over his shoulders.

“Right,” said Xander, but neither of them moved.

Rob seemed to be looking at Xander’s mouth. Xander licked his lips without meaning to, and Rob smiled slightly.

“Wish me luck?”  

Xander gulped. Why couldn’t he breathe? “Good luck,” he said, though the words came out kind of mangled.

Rob moved even closer. “That’s not what I meant,” he murmured, and then his lips were on Xander’s, just a quick press, warm and dry, and then gone, like Xander imagined it.

Before Xander could say anything, before he could even think, Rob was turning away, disappearing through the stage door, leaving only a whiff of his cologne behind.

 

**_Now_ **

It took years for Xander to tell someone. (Willow.) Years to understand what it meant, what it means. Years to accept this part of himself. To accept all of himself. 

He remembers the way Anya looked at him, like there was something worth seeing there. She— she died, and did she know? Did she understand just how much that meant to him? He couldn’t marry her, but that didn’t mean he didn’t love her. He thinks — he hopes — that by the end, she knew. She understood. His brave, beautiful Anya. Doing the stupid thing. Falling for someone like him. 

He thinks suddenly of Toth, the way his spell split him in two. The smoother half of himself — which he still calls The Other Xander, even though that’s not technically true — would he have come back here sooner? Would he have needed to? Or would he have faced what Actual Xander had repressed for all those years? Would he have kissed Rob back? 

All his life he wanted to be cool. He thought coolness was something out of his reach, something he could only attain by becoming someone else. It took him years to understand that he could be that person he wanted to be back then. The soldier. The Other Xander. A confident man who trusts his own strength and judgement, who knows himself well enough to know what he wants. 

Because what he wants is both. Faith, Angel. Anya, Rob. 

And that’s okay. He knows that now, but then—

He ran. He buried his desire with dirty dishes, ignored Roxane’s knowing eyes. And when Rob got off the stage and suggested they get a drink together, Xander practically bolted for the exit. He couldn’t face it, couldn’t think about what it meant that he liked it when Rob kissed him, that he was hoping it would happen again.

He worked at the Ladies’ Night for another month, and in that entire time, he made sure he was never alone with Rob. He never talked about it. Never discussed it.

He’s ashamed of himself now. Ashamed of how he acted, how he left the shame to rot into anger— at himself, at Rob, at the world. His therapist’s voice comes into his head again, reminding him that he was young, afraid. That he’d been raised in a world with no room for nuance, that he has to forgive himself for acting on his fear of the unknown.

He’s tried to leave that fear behind. And now he’s face-to-face with it, re-taking the test that he failed all those years ago.

“You’re gonna make me do it, aren’t you?” Willow says suddenly.

Xander blinks, startled. “Do what?”

“Come on,” Willow replies, and the next thing Xander knows, she’s dragged him out of the bus. They’re in front of the glass door a minute later, and Xander’s staring at a reflection that looks a lot calmer than he feels.

“Good luck,” says Kennedy. She’s got the door open, and Willow is shoving him through it.

They’ve tag-teamed him, he sees it now. He stumbles into the dark foyer and curses as he trips over his own feet. But he’s grateful. He’s grateful.

Because Rob is right there, waiting for him with a drink and smile.


End file.
